On The Green

There’s a certain kind of intimacy in the music that Josephine McRobbie and Joe O’Connell make as Gibson and Toutant. Like any two people who spend their lives together, Josephine and Joe have developed the kind of interpersonal telekinesis that’s often phrased as “finishing each other’s sentences.” For On the Green, as with their previous projects, that connection takes the shape of a game of telephone. One of them passes along a snatch of melody to the other one, who adds lyrics, then passes it back, and so on–but never for too long, lest the spark die. It keeps the music light, intuitive, and, not for nothing, kept within the realm of creative possibility given that there is also a toddler in the house. It’s no accident that the album’s catchiest song is titled “Quoth My Baby.”

Fittingly, then, one of On the Green’s highlights is “Carolina Shred,” in which the two intone a lullaby-simple melody over a gently accelerating cacophony of captured sounds–including the strangely comforting tones of a touchtone phone. Summoning the spirit of lost communication by meditating on the contents of one of those paper-shredding bins you see outside of office parks, the song grows spookier as it plays, before cutting off suddenly–such is the nature of séance, I suppose. On “Norm’s Oranges,” they create their own folk hero with analog powers: a regular guy who blew away in a snowstorm one day, and now turns the dials in a field, summoning the sunrise and occasionally tuning in a news broadcast, as the music grows to a noisy climax suggesting Yo La Tengo or Califone. Like “Shred,” it’s music that couldn’t exist without digital technologies, but which beats with an analog heart.

Though it arose from the duo’s idiosyncratic home-recording process, On the Green is Gibson & Toutant’s most expansive recording yet, with numerous friends and local collaborators helping them animate their ideas. Recorded with Andy Stack (Wye Oak, Joyero, Helado Negro), the album was created amid Durham’s busy music scene, with contributors like Joseph Decosimo, Nathan Golub, and Nathan Bowles chipping in, and Joe’s brother Matthew O’Connell (Chorusing) adding drums and percussion. On the effervescent “The Click,” where McRobbie traces a modest escape from reading novelty magazines to enjoying the pleasurable repetition of stopping at a toll booth on a bike ride, that’s Jake Xerxes Fussell on guitar and backup vocals, and Libby Rodenbough contributing fiddle and vocals.

The contributors only enhance the fundamental sonic intimacy and curiosity of On the Green. This is an album that hones in on the kind of informational and emotional proximity encountered through listening to discarded answering machine tapes, scanning someone’s open browser tabs, or hearing a snatch of conversation through an apartment wall. This is “roots music,” in the broadest possible definition of the term: fiddle and guitar and grass and trees and cables and screens and transmissions over wires and magnetic tape, growing into something new. They take a small thing and make it something else in a few days. Did you ever realize it could sound like that?

Album bio by Eric Harvey

Single art (L-R: Quoth, The Click, The Fairway, Norm’s Oranges). Design by Gabe Anderson with still taken from Asia Harman’s camcorder footage.

Performance Credits

• Fiddle - Joseph Decosimo

• Pedal steel - Nathan Golub

• Drums, shaker, bongos, woodblock, sandpaper - Matthew O’Connell

• Vocals, bass guitar, electric guitar, drums - Josephine McRobbie

• Vocals, electric guitar, bass guitar, keyboard, pump organ, melodica, xylophone, The Mutant - Joe O’Connell

• Fiddle, cello, backup vocals - Libby Rodenbough

• Electric guitar, backup vocals - Jake Xerxes Fussell

• Keyboard - Nathan Bowles

• Keyboard - Andy Stack

Production Credits

• Written and produced by Josephine McRobbie and Joe O’Connell

• Recorded by Andy Stack at Doom Homestead

• Engineered by Andy Stack, Joe O’Connell

• Mixed by Joe, additional mixing by Saman Khoujinian

• Mastered by Alli Blois at Betty’s

• Thanks to: Erica Titkemeyer, Annie Peterson, Durham Soccer Academy, Eric Harvey, Asia Harman, Mike Newins, Matthew O’Connell, and Hannah Rainey.

• Cover design by Gabe Anderson with photos by Libby Rodenbough

• Camcorder images by Asia Harman

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